We love Fellows with diverse academic backgrounds that go beyond what companies traditionally think of when hiring Data Scientists. Yash was a Fellow in our first cohort who landed a job with one of our hiring partners, AppNexus.
Tell us about your background.
Recently, I joined as a data scientist at AppNexus, a technology company that provides trading solutions and powers marketplaces for internet advertising. Here I am responsible for analyzing the vast amounts of rich data and building models to improve real-time ad serving.
What do you think you got out of The Data Incubator?
What advice would you give to someone who is applying for The Data Incubator, particularly someone with a Biomedical Engineering background?
Frankly, I was a little daunted by the uphill task of getting screened and selected for the program. Especially, since I did not come from a background in statistics or computer science. It was only when I met with the other Fellows who had formal training in completely diverse fields, did I realize that each one of us had a different expertise.
Since there are so many hiring companies each seeking a varied skill set, there is ample opportunity to find your “perfect match”. Being shortlisted from an immensely bright pool of students can surely be intimidating, but I would undoubtedly encourage everyone to apply for the workshop regardless. The application rounds are themselves challenging noteworthy experiences.
What advice would you give to foreign PhD students applying for jobs in the US?
What elements of your Biomedical Engineering training are useful for your current work as a data scientist?
For academic research, I mostly used MATLAB and had very little experience with Python. But the strong foundation in algorithms and data structures has helped me grasp different programming languages and concepts with relative ease.